Microsoft 365 Outage Day 2: Outlook Still Recovering, What Microsoft Says

Microsoft's global Microsoft 365 outage stretched into a second day on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. In an update at 6:11 a.m. ET, Microsoft said it had "made additional progress toward recovery" and that traffic is "being gradually restored," but it has not said the problem is fixed. At 7:09 a.m. ET, Microsoft reported encouraging recovery progress and improving service availability and email delivery across a growing portion of affected infrastructure, while some users could still experience intermittent issues. Its public status page still lists "service degradation" for Microsoft 365, saying users "may be unable to connect to multiple Microsoft 365 services."

Is the Microsoft outage fixed?

Not fully, as of Friday morning. Microsoft's 6:11 a.m. ET update on its Microsoft 365 Status account on X said: "We've made additional progress toward recovery, with actions now completed across portions of affected infrastructure and traffic being gradually restored. We're seeing improvements in key scenarios, including mailbox access and delayed email processing, though some intermittent issues may continue."

The company said it is now "extending these recovery actions across remaining affected infrastructure while continuing stabilization and adding capacity to improve consistency." NBC News reported that the first completed recovery actions were in the Asia Pacific region.

An hour earlier, at 5:28 a.m. ET, Microsoft said "service health remains variable and capacity has not yet fully returned to baseline."

What broke?

Microsoft has not published a root cause yet, but its updates on Thursday laid out what engineers found:

• **1:35 p.m. ET:** "A portion of infrastructure is experiencing elevated load across multiple regions."
• **2:31 p.m. ET:** "The elevated load isn't driven by an increase in traffic, but by a number of servers being unexpectedly unavailable; straining the remaining infrastructure."
• **2:50 p.m. ET:** Servers were failing automated health checks and becoming unavailable.
• **5:09 p.m. ET:** "A core process on affected servers is becoming overwhelmed, causing capacity loss," and actions so far "have not provided the anticipated relief."
• **7:06 p.m. ET:** "The servers we returned to service can become unresponsive again once they receive traffic." Microsoft began temporarily limiting which types of traffic could reach the affected infrastructure.

Earlier, at 3:19 p.m. ET, Microsoft said it had "not identified any recent change correlated with the start of impact," though by 4:40 p.m. it was assessing whether reverting "a small number of recent configuration updates" could speed recovery. Overnight, NBC News reported, Microsoft said it saw positive results after applying "an upstream authentication/routing configuration component patch" to part of its infrastructure. Microsoft has said it will share full details in a Post-Incident Report once the issue is mitigated.

Microsoft said it is not aware of malicious activity causing the incident. Australia's Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters Microsoft does not believe it is dealing with a cyberattack.

Who is affected?

The trouble started with Exchange Online mailboxes in the Americas. At 12:54 p.m. ET Thursday, Microsoft said it was investigating mailbox access issues "through multiple connection methods in the Americas." Thirteen minutes later it said the issue "may affect Microsoft 365 service connectivity for users in any region."

Downdetector reports spread to 74 countries and territories within about an hour, NBC News reported. The BBC said Downdetector logged about 140,000 Outlook reports from 74 countries on Thursday evening. Because Downdetector relies on users reporting problems, the real number affected is likely higher.

Governments and businesses felt it:

• **Japan:** Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said Outlook and other services became unavailable, disrupting inter-ministerial communications.
• **United States:** Baltimore County said staff could not send or receive email, but 911 and essential services were not affected. The City of Austin said employees could not send or receive email, while 911 kept working. Jacksonville, Florida, said email was affected.
• **United Kingdom:** Some police forces and family doctors' practices said online forms and patient messages could be delayed.
• **Business:** Euronext, Aviva and Maersk reported email problems, and OpenAI and Anthropic said Microsoft connectors were affected, according to NBC News.

Cloud outages have hit other providers this fall, too, including a Google Cloud outage in London, though Microsoft's is far wider. It also lands weeks after Microsoft reported faster Azure growth and a rising AI infrastructure bill.

Timeline of the outage (ET)

| Time | What Microsoft said or did | |---|---| | Thu 11:17 a.m. | Incident begins, per Microsoft (NBC News) | | Thu 12:54 p.m. | Investigating Exchange Online mailbox access in the Americas | | Thu 1:07 p.m. | Issue may affect users "in any region" | | Thu 2:12 p.m. | Paused all deployments, moving traffic off affected infrastructure | | Thu 2:31 p.m. | Load caused by servers being "unexpectedly unavailable" | | Thu 5:09 p.m. | A core process on affected servers "becoming overwhelmed" | | Thu 7:06 p.m. | Restored servers can become unresponsive again under traffic | | Thu 10:13 p.m. | Earlier changes "not taking as expected" | | Thu 11:36 p.m. | "Partial recovery" in regions where new measures were applied | | Fri 4:24 a.m. | Email timeout extended to 48 hours to preserve delayed mail | | Fri 6:11 a.m. | Traffic "being gradually restored"; intermittent issues may continue |

What can you do?

• **Check the official status page:** Microsoft posts updates at status.cloud.microsoft and on its Microsoft 365 Status account on X. IT admins can follow MO1550821 in the Microsoft 365 admin center.
• **Expect delayed mail, not lost mail:** Microsoft extended the email timeout window to 48 hours "to protect delayed mail while queue and backlog processing continues." That means messages sent during the outage may still arrive late.
• **Use another channel for urgent messages:** Several governments and businesses told the public to call instead of email. Baltimore County and Austin said 911 was not affected.

What's next

Microsoft said it is extending recovery actions to the remaining affected infrastructure. It has not given a time for full recovery. NewsCubby will update this story as Microsoft posts new information. For more on how the company is changing, read about Microsoft's buyout offers for workers.

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*NewsCubby articles are produced with AI assistance and reviewed by humans.*